The Time Tutor Read Online Free

you, too.”
    â€œBut I want to marry her.”
    Those clear, pale eyes. Bertrand looked happier than Dar had ever seen him. “You’re an idiot,” Dar said, but there was affection in his voice.
    â€œIt’s all politics with you, isn’t it?”
    Dar levered himself up again. “Someday you’ll realize it’s all politics with everyone.”
    Bertrand drew a line through the salt on the table with his finger. “You wouldn’t know,” he said. “Your heart is—”
    â€œMoldy with disuse? Yes, yes it is. But take courage, Prince Valiant. It sounds to me like we have a little while. Hannelore’s testing you by having you spy on Alva. You’ll continue to do just that, and I’ll think of a way to save your girlfriend. How’s that for generosity?”
    Bertrand smiled. “Thank you.”
    â€œThere’s only one thing I want in return.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œYour word, Arthur. When you do decide to betray the Ofan, I want you to come to me and formally dissolve your connection. Until then, I shall trust that you are still embedded in the Guild on Ofan work. I don’t want to doubt you or distrust you until you come to me and tell me to my face.”
    Bertrand stood, his hand folded into a fist on the table. A ring set with a purple stone glinted on his finger. “Did I not bring my doubts to you today, and ask your counsel?”
    Dar bowed. “That you did, like a man.”
    â€œThen, so long as you understand that I have never once broken my word to you or to the Ofan, I swear.”
    Dar glanced around the bar, but no one seemed to have noticed their slip back into antique behaviors. He turned and walked toward the door. “Keep doing what you’ve been doing,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll take care of the girl.”
    Bertrand called after him. “You’ll see when you meet her. She’s perfect. I know you’ll think so!”
    But Dar was already gone, out of the pub and out of the twentieth century.
    He had a plan for that Guild girl, and Bertrand wasn’t going to like it.
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    The card was on the tray beside her morning cup of hot chocolate. Alva picked it up and peered at the engraving that took up most of the surface. A naked angel standing over the sphere of the Earth, his long, white beard flowing down over his chest and covering his groin, his wings tattered. In one hand he held a scythe, and in the other, an hourglass. Beneath the image, in flowing letters with much scrolling, a name and address: Ignatz Vogelstein, At The Sign of the Angel, Over-Against Middle Row, Holborn, London. Then at the very bottom, in bold, unadorned lettering: TIME TUTOR .
    She was about to reach out and pull the bell rope to ask Susan, her maid, about the card, when something compelled her to turn it over. Scrawled across the back, in blood-red ink, two lines of verse:
    Do not run and tell your Mother
    Come to the Angel under Cover
    She raised her eyebrows. Then—because red ink was often scented with rose—she raised the card to her nose and sniffed. And sniffed again. The ink had a sweet smell, yes, but it was spicy. She searched her memory: cardamom.
    She committed the address to memory, swung her legs from her bed, walked over to the fire, and tossed the card onto the coals. She watched as the paper darkened and then burst into flames.
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    Three days, and the wretched girl still hadn’t taken the bait. Dar sat hour after hour in the dark storefront he’d rented, dressed in rusty old clothes, with a bothersome horsehair wig on his head and spectacles teetering on his nose. He toasted his toes by the fire, trying not to dream of jumping to an era that had central heating. At least there was brandy. He poured himself another couple of fingers.
    Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe she’d told